IN CONCERT
What: Back to the ‘90s Tour, featuring Vanilla Ice, Rob Base, Young MC and C&C Music Factory featuring Freedom Williams
Where: Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre, 1925 Blanshard St.
When: Wed. Aug. 22, 7:30 p.m. (doors at 6:30)
Tickets: $45, $59, and $79.50 at selectyourtickets.com, by phone at 250-220-7777, or in person at the Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre
Rap music was midway through its golden era at the end of the 1980s, with everyone from LL Cool J to Run DMC making mainstream inroads. The soon-to-be-giants of the genre — 2Pac, the Notorious B.I.G., Jay-Z — had yet to fully find their footing, however, which allowed a stop-gap style of music to worm its way into the mix for a brief period.
Four of the big names from the pop-rap pack — Vanilla Ice, Rob Base, Young MC and C&C Music Factory — are joined together for the Back to the ’90s tour that stops Wednesday at the Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre. Theirs was a brief run on the charts as family-friendly fare was soon supplanted by the gangsta rap of N.W.A. and Dr. Dre. But the legacies of pop-rap artists have endured.
Historians point to Jan. 11, 1992, when Nirvana unseated Michael Jackson at the top of the Billboard charts, as a major turning point in popular culture. For many, it was the beginning of new era, but that thinking overlooks an obvious truth: Change had begun years earlier when DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince won the first rap trophy at the 1989 Grammy Awards. Young MC won the award in 1990, for Bust a Move, the same year Vanilla Ice’s album To the Extreme became the fastest selling rap album of all time. To the Extreme spent 16 weeks at No. 1, thanks to the success of the hit Ice Ice Baby. The genre came to an apex when MC Hammer was eventually crowned king. Hammer’s hit U Can’t Touch This caused a feeding frenzy, with sales of his 1990 album, Please Hammer, Don’t Hurt ’Em, exceeding 10 million copies.
The tour showcase traversing North America has several factions and lineups, including Tone Loc, Salt-N-Pepa, Coolio, Kid ’n Play, and Montell Jordan, to name a few. A tour branded I Love the ’90s stops Aug. 23 in Vancouver with C&C Music Factory featuring Freedom Williams, Young MC, All-4-One and Salt-N-Pepa, but without Vanilla Ice and Rob Base. Though the participants are interchangeable, the formula is proven. In July, a variation of the Back to the ’90s tour was booked to close out Bluesfest Windsor, and drew 8,000 fans. The package, headlined by Vanilla Ice, doubled the Ontario festival’s previous one-night attendance record, proving that the artists involved on the trek destined for Victoria continue to make money.
“From my standpoint, there’s been a resurgence in late ’80s and ’90s music,” Young MC said during a recent interview with Forbes magazine. “A lot of that has to do with the demographic of people getting to that age where they’re spending money and have more disposable income.”
Young MC enjoyed a spike in popularity after his 1989 song Know How was used prominently in the 2017 film Baby Driver, while his chart-topper Bust a Move has enjoyed a retro rebirth in clubs across North America.
“I wouldn’t trade Bust a Move for any popular record since the day it came out,” Young MC told Digiday magazine. “I wouldn’t trade it for a Michael Jackson record, I wouldn’t trade it for a Prince record. I wouldn’t trade it for a rapper with bigger careers. They have great records, but they don’t have one as good as Bust A Move.”
Rob Base’s enduring 1988 hit It Takes Two was covered by singer Carly Rae Jepsen and rapper Lil Yachty, and used as the theme to a Target fall clothing campaign in 2017, while the original soundtracked the trailer to this summer’s Marvel Comics movie Ant-Man and the Wasp. It Takes Two remains one of the most popular songs in rap history and one of the biggest party-starters of any genre.
“One day, we’re doing little block parties and rockin’ outside for free, to doing big clubs and arenas,” Base said of the song’s sudden success in an interview with Rolling Stone this summer.
“Once the song started to get played, next thing you know, we’re on the tour bus, getting on planes. Travelling all over. It definitely was like what they say, overnight success. We woke up and we were just different people.”
Vanilla Ice, whose Ice Ice Baby was his first hip-hop single to top the Billboard charts, has moved into reality TV as the host of renovation show The Vanilla Ice Project. He is the clear-cut headliner of the Back to the ’90s tour, having achieved a certain degree of notoriety, from dating Madonna to appearing as a cast member of 2004 reality show The Surreal Life.
The only missing-in-action member of the tour stopping in Victoria is Freedom Williams of C+C Music Factory, who — despite sales totals in the multi-millions for the hits Gonna Make You Sweat and Things That Make You Go Hmmmm... — has not found the fountain of youth, despite Gonna Make Sweat being a staple at sporting events across North America.
His last dalliance with mainstream pop culture came courtesy of a 2016 Applebee’s commercial, which may have something to do with numerous lawsuits between members over the use of the name and songwriting credits.
Back to the ’90s is promoting fun above all else. That’s wise, from a business standpoint. Tours by current stars Drake, Jay-Z and Beyoncé can worry about artistic integrity. Pop-rap was never concerned with wowing critics. Fan approval was — and continues to be — more than enough, Rob Base told Rolling Stone this summer.
“When we get into It Takes Two, people they respond like the record came out yesterday.”